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CIA report details 'brutal' post-9/11 interrogations

US & CANADA

9 December 2014 Last updated at 16:15

The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US Senate report has said.

The summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report said the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation".

It said interrogations were badly managed and the information collected unreliable.

President Obama previously said that in his view the techniques were torture.

The Senate committee's report runs to more than 6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary is being released.

Publication had been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public.

President Barack Obama halted the CIA interrogation programme when he took office in 2009.

Earlier this year he said that in his view the methods used to question al-Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

During the presidency of George W Bush, the CIA operation against al-Qaeda - known internally as the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation - saw as many as 100 suspected terrorists held in "black sites" outside the US.

They were interrogated using methods such as waterboarding, slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold and sleep deprivation.

--------From The Independent

CIA 'torture' report: The 54 countries that will be worried by controversial revelations

After years of waiting, the US is about to publish a report exposing the “enhanced” interrogation techniques used by its intelligence service around the world – in other words, what many class as CIA torture.

The implications of the report stretch around the whole world, with much of the most controversial activity taking place off US soil. The map above shows just how many countries were participants in the CIA programme, according to the George Soros’ Open Society Foundation’s 2013 report.

Though unofficial, that very detailed probe concluded that 54 countries around the world assisted the CIA’s programme – 25 of them in Europe.

Today’s report, actually a 480-page summary of a 6,000-page investigation from the Senate Intelligence Committee, is expected to include graphic details about sexual threats, waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques meted out to captured militants since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Preparing for a worldwide outcry, and possibly even violence, from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday they had taken steps to shore up security of US facilities worldwide.

But what is the report? And how much light will it shine on almost a decade and a half of secretive, possibly illegal Government activity.

American diplomatic and military posts overseas have been told to prepare themselves for violent protests this week if the US Senate proceeds with its promised release of a long-awaited report into 'enhanced' interrogation techniques used by the CIA on prisoners after the 11 September attacks 13 years agoWhat is the report?

The report, which took years to produce, is the first independent assessment of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which George Bush authorised after 9/11.

Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.

Senate Intelligence Committee staff reportedly reviewed around six million pages of information, while the report itself has over 38,000 footnotes citing CIA documents.

What details will it reveal?

Sources say the overall findings of the report are expected to be that the CIA programme did not deliver life-saving intelligence, that its techniques were more brutal than previously admitted, and that CIA officials misled the White House as to the extent of their activities.

More specifically, the report is said to describe how senior al-Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened by his interrogators with a buzzing power drill. The drill was never actually used on Nashiri.

President Obama speaking ahead of the expected release of a Senate report that criticises the CIA’s treatment of captivesIn another instance, the report documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, sources told the Reuters news agency.

Other methods, such as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces and waterboarding, will be described as having gone beyond what was “legally allowable”, CBS News reported.

Cases in which CIA interrogators threatened one or more detainees with mock executions - a practice never authorised by Bush administration lawyers - are documented in the report, the Reuters sources said.

Why has it taken so long to be published?

It has taken three separate bipartisan votes to create, approve and finally declassify the report – in 2009, 2012 and 2014 respectively.

Republicans have fiercely opposed the publication, suggesting it will be to the detriment of national security, and critiques from Republican committee members and CIA officials are expected to be included in the release.

Abdulhakim Belhadj, a Libyan who claimed Britain helped the CIA in his illegal rendition into the hands of the Gaddafi governmentWith negotiations over how much could be released complete, Secretary of State John Kerry had earlier asked the committee to “consider” changing the timing of the report.

But that request has been denied – the committee does not want to risk not coming out under this Government, giving a potential new Republican government the chance to bury it altogether.

How will the world respond?

Preparing for a worldwide outcry, and possibly even violence, from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday that they had taken steps to shore up security of US facilities worldwide.

“There are some indications that the release of the report could lead to greater risk that is posed to US facilities and individuals all around the world,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

John Kerry asked the committee to 'consider' the timing of the reportBut because so much of the CIA programme appears to have involved activity away from US soil, many other countries around the world will be concerned.

Among them is the UK which, it has been claimed, provided assistance to the CIA in the illegal rendition of Abdelhakim Belhadj, an anti-Gaddafi rebel leader who was returned to Libya reportedly via CIA custody.

The US State Department has warned all overseas posts to be prepared for a “range of reactions” in the wake of the report.

And the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, has been outspoken in his opposition. “I think this is a terrible idea,” he said on CNN. “Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths’.”

The shooting of Ibragim Todashev: is the lawlessness of Obama's drone policy coming home?

Once a state gets used to abusing the rights of foreigners in distant lands, it's almost inevitable it will import the habit

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 3 June 2013 20.50 BST

‘Under the Obama doctrine, innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.' Illustration by Daniel Pudles

Did the FBI execute Ibragim Todashev? He appears to have been shot seven times while being interviewed at home in Orlando, Florida, about his connection to one of the Boston bombing suspects. Among the shots was the assassin's hallmark: a bullet to the back of the head. What kind of an interview was it?

An irregular one. There was no lawyer present. It was not recorded. By the time Todashev was shot, he had apparently been interrogated by three agents for five hours. And then? Who knows? First, we were told, he lunged at them with a knife. How he acquired it, five hours into a police interview, was not explained. How he posed such a threat while recovering from a knee operation also remains perplexing.

At first he drew the knife while being interviewed. Then he acquired it during a break from the interview. Then it ceased to be a knife and became a sword, then a pipe, then a metal pole, then a broomstick, then a table, then a chair. In one account all the agents were in the room at the time of the attack; in another, all but one had mysteriously departed, leaving the remaining officer to face his assailant alone.

If – and it remains a big if – this was an extrajudicial execution, it was one of hundreds commissioned by US agencies since Barack Obama first took office. The difference in this case is that it took place on American soil. Elsewhere, suspects are bumped off without even the right to the lawyerless interview Ibragim Todashev was given.

In his speech two days after Todashev was killed, President Obama maintained that "our commitment to constitutional principles has weathered every war". But he failed to explain which constitutional principles permit him to authorise the killing of people in nations with which the US is not at war. When his attorney general, Eric Holder, tried to do so last year, he got himself into a terrible mess, ending with the extraordinary claim that "'due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same … the constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process". So what is due process if it doesn't involve the courts? Whatever the president says it is?

Er, yes. In the same speech Obama admitted for the first time that four American citizens have been killed by US drone strikes in other countries. In the next sentence, he said: "I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any US citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process." This suggests he believes that the legal rights of those four people had been respected before they were killed.

Given that they might not even have known that they were accused of the alleged crimes for which they were executed, that they had no opportunities to contest the charges, let alone be granted judge or jury, this suggests that the former law professor's interpretation of constitutional rights is somewhat elastic. If Obama and his nameless advisers say someone is a terrorist, he stands convicted and can be put to death.

Left hanging in his speech is the implication that non-US citizens may be killed without even the pretence of due process. The many hundreds killed by drone strikes (who, civilian or combatant, retrospectively become terrorists by virtue of having been killed in a US anti-terrorism operation) are afforded no rights even in principle.

As the process of decision-making remains secret, as the US government refuses even to acknowledge – let alone to document or investigate – the killing by its drones of people who patently had nothing to do with terrorism or any other known crime, miscarriages of justice are not just a risk emerging from the deployment of the president's kill list. They are an inevitable outcome. Under the Obama doctrine, innocent until proved guilty has mutated to innocent until proved dead.

The president made his rejection of habeas corpus and his assumption of a godlike capacity for judgment explicit later in the speech, while discussing another matter. How, he wondered, should the US deal with detainees in Guantánamo Bay "who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted – for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law"? If the evidence has been compromised or is inadmissible, how can he know that they have participated? He can suspect, he can allege, but he cannot know until his suspicion has been tested in a court of law.

Global powers have an antisocial habit of bringing their work back home. The British government imported some of the methods it used against its colonial subjects to suppress domestic protests and strikes. Once an administrative class becomes accustomed to treating foreigners as if they have no rights, and once the domestic population broadly accepts their justifications, it is almost inevitable that the habit migrates from one arena into another. If hundreds of people living abroad can be executed by American agents on no more than suspicion, should we be surprised if residents of the United States began to be treated the same way?

Indian police still using truth serum

Use of Sodium Pentothal to secure confessions – classified by some as torture – still common in certain regions of India

• Helen Pidd
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 July 2012 18.37 BST

A person injected with “truth serum” is generally too woozy to give lengthy explanations, but can supply answers to certain questions and clues. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/Reuters

It is the sort of scene that belongs in a film noir, not a 21st-century democracy: an uncooperative suspect being injected with a dose of "truth serum" in an attempt to elicit a confession. But some detectives in India still swear by so-called narcoanalysis despite India's highest court ruling that it was not only unreliable but also "cruel, inhuman and degrading".

The technique is back in the news after officers from India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) asked a judge for permission to administer sodium pentothal to a high-profile Indian politician and his financial adviser embroiled in a corruption case. The drug is a barbiturate that acts on the central nervous system, dissolving anxiety, inducing drowsiness and even unconsciousness.

CBI investigators made the application in order to try to prove embezzlement allegations against Jagan Mohan Reddy, the charismatic son of YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009. They argue that the technique is warranted because neither Reddy nor his auditor are co-operating with the inquiry.

Reddy Jr tipped for the chief minister's job himself, has protested vehemently against the use of narcoanalysis on the grounds that a supreme court ruling in 2010 held that such tests are illegal without consent from the individuals.

But Dr Gandhi PC Kaza, chairman of the Truth Lab, India's first independent forensic service, told the Guardian that despite narcoanalysis being "unscientific, undemocratic, illegal and inhumane", it was still used with enthusiasm in certain Indian states – notably Gujarat and Karnataka. He condemned the practice, saying it had "no place in the world's greatest democracy".

There are no official figures for the number of suspects who have been subjected to narcoanalysis, but VH Patel, deputy director at the Directorate of Forensic Sciences, Gandhinagar, in Gujarat, western India, told the Guardian he had personally conducted narcoanalysis in nearly 100 cases. He estimates that his lab gets requests for narcoanalysis three to four times a month.

He insisted that the procedure was safe and ethical. "There is no violence involved. It's a good methodology that helps the investigation," he said. "After all, there has to be justice for the victims.If we conduct narcoanalysis on a terror suspect, everyone kicks up a fuss, but what about the people who have suffered?"

Patel said he worked with a team of three other scientists to administer the tests, as well as a psychiatrist and an anaesthetist, who decides which drugs to use at what dosage. "It takes almost a week to test a single person. We conduct various medical tests and interviews with them," he said. "It's an important methodology but we cannot say how accurate it is in the end. That depends on the investigation."

A person injected with "truth serum" is generally too woozy to volunteer lengthy explanations, but is usually able to give answers to certain questions and clues. Patel said his lab had received no complaints regarding side-effects. But in 2011, Sheikh Mujib, an engineering student who was accused in a bomb blast case in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, complained of health problems after narcoanalysis.

Arun Ferreira, a political activist who underwent forced narcoanalyis after being arrested in 2007 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for being an alleged Maoist, described the procedure as a sort of torture – and one whichthat "only decreases the individual's ability to lie and is in no way a foolproof method for uncovering the truth". The revelations supposedly made under the influence of truth serum may contain fantasies like a person under the influence of alcohol."

Sometimes defendants undergo the procedure in an attempt to prove their innocence. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, currently on trial in Delhi for murdering their 14-year-old daughter, volunteered for narcoanalysis in an attempt to prove their innocence. The inventor of narcoanalysis, an American obstetrician called Robert House, originally meant it to exonerate prisoners. During his time in labour wards around 1915, he noticed that the drug administered to women during childbirth, scopolamine, had a strange effect on his patients, causing them to talk freely. In 1922, he arranged to interview two suspected criminals under the influence of the same drug – they denied the charges and were later found not guilty.

Many experts believe narcoanalysis can be classed as torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture. Though India signed the convention in 1997, its parliament never ratified it.